The Specimen Strikes Back
by nacimynom
Summary: While still reeling from the events of the "Sunday" season 3 episode, the team is split up by difficult circumstances. Her Wraith detector tingling, Teyla wakes up alone in a very strange place. The last thing she remembers was that Sheppard had been with her. Will anything stop her from finding out what the heck is going on? Written for the sheppard hc Summer Pic-Fic Challenge.
1. Chapter 1

**Written for: **The Sheppard_hc 2013 Summer Pic-Fic Challenge

**Spoilers: **Set during Season 3, soon after "Sunday"

**Acknowledgements****:** Thank you to amycat8733 and firedew for being my wonderful beta readers, and to coolbreeze1 for the very cool pic prompt.

**Disclaimer:** The SGA world is not mine. I wrote this story for fun not profit

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**_The Specimen Strikes Back_-Chapter 1**

A bone-deep cold infiltrated Teyla's dreamless sleep. As that familiar warning sign filled every fiber of her body with dread, it dissipated the fogginess that swaddled her mind. She had to wake up to warn the others.

"Colonel … John? I sense Wraith," she tried to shout. It came out as a hoarse, barely audible whisper that sounded like another person.

She used a surge of fear-induced strength to pry open and _keep_ open her incomprehensively heavy eyelids. The effort made her as tired as a sparring session with Ronon. The reward did not seem worthy of her energy expenditure. All she saw were tall metallic conduits and geometric mirrored surfaces that reflected indiscernible shapes. Everything was dimly lit in pale blue and pink hues.

The intensifying chilling sensation alerting her that the Wraith was getting closer did wonders to shake off the lingering torpor from her mind. But no matter how many times she blinked to clear her eyes, her surroundings remained distorted and utterly alien.

She had no memory of how she had ended up in this strange place. The last thing she remembered was that she had been following John, watching their six, while he kept track of the Wraith Dart. For Ronon and Rodney's sake, they needed to stop it before it reached the stargate. As he fired his P90 at the Dart, she had caught sight of a fast approaching shadow. Acting on instinct, she had pushed John to the ground to avoid the expected culling beam. His muffled groan made her suspect that he had sustained an injury. Before she had a chance to ask, a sharp pain struck the back of her head and then—and then, nothing.

She recalled nothing else until she woke up here. Wherever here might be. Something—no, many things were terribly wrong.

Most pressing though, the cold wrongness pervading her from within indicated that the Wraith had to be standing right next to her.

Verging on full-blown panic, she tried to lift her hand to wipe her eyes and clear her vision, but she could not move her limbs. It was as if her body had been glued to the hard, chilled surface upon which she found herself resting. The fine hair on her arms prickled from the pull of what John and Rodney called goose bumps. Her tailbone hurt from lying flat on her back for a prolonged period of time. Her muscles remained stubbornly unresponsive to that inner call to flee immediately. With tremendous effort she turned her head to face the direction of the Wraith.

She preferred to face her death.

She could barely discern his shape. There was something very strange about it. Squinting helped her judge that he was a little over five hand spans away from her. Like her, he was supine and encased in a transparent box-like container. Its shape, but not its composition, reminded her of the wood caskets the Genii used to bury their dead—her own people preferred funeral pyres, when there were any remains left of their loved one.

Unlike her, this Wraith was completely immobile and appeared unconscious. As she certainly did not wish to be around to find out for how long he would remain in this harmless state, she ratcheted up her efforts to force her body to move and her eyes to focus.

Her sight cleared up before she regained control of her limbs. A glance down her body confirmed her suspicion that all her clothes were gone. At that realization, her eyes snapped back to the dormant Wraith.

He too was naked.

That was why, when she had first seen him through her unfocused vision, his shape had appeared so strange. Before she turned her sight away from the unwanted image, she noticed thin tubing stuck into the top of his hand and the side of his neck. The tubing snaked out of the container, through one of several small round holes lining its side, and disappeared out of her line of sight. The slightly stinging prickles on her own reawakened right hand and neck led her to surmise that she had similar tubing protruding from her own body.

Her imagination—fueled by personal experience and numerous Earth movies watched with her Atlantis friends—immediately leaped to the conclusion that noxious substances were being infused into her body. That would explain why she still felt the pull of sleep streaming through her veins.

She refused to succumb to it and threw all her strength and willpower against it.

Her left arm finally moved. She snatched her still somewhat numb right hand, raising it so that she could see as she pulled out the long needle and tubing that had been inserted between her pointer and middle fingers. She ignored the pain and the blood streaking down her palm.

Who had done this and to what purpose? Anger now energized her.

She probed the side of her neck area and found a similar implement inserted there. This one she pulled out with a modicum of additional caution before she pressed a finger at the entry site. Now that she was fully awake, an even greater worry gnawed away at her: where were John and the others?

Suddenly, the container that held her jerked into motion. Wherever it was going could not possibly be a good thing for her. The blood dribbling from her neck lost its priority. She pushed with both hands against the top enclosing her; there was not enough head space to fully extend her arms.

The top did not budge.

Through her peripheral vision, she noticed that the Wraith's container was moving too. She peered down the length of her body and caught a view of the rails on which both of their containers were running in parallel. They were headed toward a dark, low rectangular opening through the farthest wall.

Desperate to find a way out, she bent her knees and planted her shins against the top. She pressed as hard as she could with her legs and arms. When she noticed the latch on the right panel of the enclosure, she concentrated her efforts on that side. She pushed and pounded, again and again, smearing the bloody prints she kept on making with her right hand.

With a crack, the latch finally snapped.

Her time was running out—the opening now loomed too close. Without hesitation, she lifted the top pane and extricated herself from the container. While she clambered out, she lost her grip on the pane. It nearly shut on her ankle as she flopped onto the metal grating covering the machinery attached to the rear of the container. As she caught her breath from the exertion, she crouched low, fearful that someone might have seen her. Fortunately, the long chamber appeared to be deserted.

A flicker of movement caught her attention.

A third container had appeared from the opening they were headed toward and would reach in mere seconds. That container was moving in the opposite direction on a third railing. A narrow corridor separated her from its tracks. When the container neared, she noticed that it held nothing except a few splatters of dark green goop on its side panels. They looked strange and somewhat familiar, reinforcing her growing conviction that danger lurked on the other side of that opening.

Teyla did not want to go through there. Seeing no better option, she leaped off from the moving container.

Despite landing in the corridor on soft knees, she stumbled and fell sideways against the nearest railing, scraping and bruising her right hip, buttock and upper thigh. Although dazed by the impact, she kept on moving, periodically glancing behind her to ensure that she was not leaving a trail of blood. Her luck could not hold much longer; someone was bound to come and check on the status of the containers or the other equipment lining the walls of this cavernous, windowless chamber.

To make sure that they would not hurt her, she gingerly touched the next set of pipes before she climbed over them and crossed the rails on which the empty container moved. The floor was cool and smooth under her bare feet. Its metallic texture was unlike any building flooring she had ever walked on. In fact, it reminded her of the Orion, the Ancient spaceship John had flown to escape the volcanic eruptions on Taranis.

That clue and the stale taste of the air suggested that she might be in a space vessel or, perhaps, a modular station, like the moon base where her team had encountered Herick and Jamus, the place where John had risked his life to save hers. Little time had passed since then, but so much had happened. Carson and Harriet, her good friends, were among the many fine people who had died or been badly injured on an ill-fated Sunday that Elizabeth had specifically designated for rest and relaxation. Such sadness.

But this was not the time for reminiscing.

After she climbed over another set of railings, she hid behind one of the wide large metal cylinders that lined the wall on this side of the chamber. She took stock of her situation.

She had woken up here alone, with no clothes or weapons, and no clue as to who had brought her here and why. Two things she was certain of—this was not a Wraith hive or cruiser and her captors did not have benign intentions. One of the many things she did not know was whether she should hope that John had been taken too or if it would be better for him to have been left behind on the Wraith-infested planet. Maybe he had found Ronon and Rodney, and the three of them were now searching for her. But, no, that did not seem possible given what she remembered.

Her body's many aches prompted her to shift on her haunches into a more comfortable position. Some of these aches she could trace to the fall. Others, like the sharp stitch low on her right side, she had no recollection of their origin.

Another container returned from the exit that she had avoided. When it neared her hiding spot, she recognized her own bloodied handprints on its walls and the latch she had broken. The container had been gone for only a few minutes before it reappeared.

After she watched it pass by, another container returned on the same tracks. This one was empty except for smears of what she now recognized to be Wraith blood and bits of flesh scattered on the bottom. The latch to this container was undamaged. What had happened to the Wraith? Most likely, by waking up and leaping out of the container, she had just avoided a gruesome death.

The Wraith had saved her.

In his absence, she would have remained unconscious and would have met the same dreadful end. The momentary delight at recognizing the irony of the situation got swept away by a horrifying thought. If John too had been entrapped in one of these contraptions, he would not have woken up in time to escape.

No, she told herself, he could not be dead. To lose him too, that would be too much.

Teyla shook off the veil of despair that threatened to paralyze her. Instead of wasting time with suppositions, she had to focus on what she could do. Her top priority was to determine John's whereabouts. Along the way, she would uncover the who, why, and where of her capture. If John was here, she would find him. Together they would escape and resume their hunt for Rodney and Ronon. It would not be too late.

First though, she had to procure weapons and clothes would be nice too. While quite comfortable in her own skin, she would prefer not to have to fight for her life in the nude.

Having decided that the best way to start would be at the beginning, Teyla stealthily followed the rail tracks to retrace the journey she must have taken while still unconscious. She hoped to be able to intercept whoever might notice that the latch to one of these strange containers had been broken off.

She needed to forestall the raising of an alarm for an escaped prisoner. Anyone who had the guile to imprison not only humans but also Wraith had to be quite a formidable foe. Her best tactic was to delay confrontation until she could do it on her own terms.

Fortified by her admittedly vague plan, she followed the tracks toward what she had labeled the entrance of this long narrow hall. She cautiously peered inside. She saw and heard nothing alarming.

With one last glance behind, she went through.


	2. Chapter 2

**Written for: **The Sheppard_hc 2013 Summer Pic-Fic Challenge

**Spoilers: **Set during Season 3, soon after "Sunday"

**Acknowledgements:** Coolbreeze1 provided the very cool pic prompt. Amycat8733 and firedew are my wonderful beta readers but, I made some changes to this chapter after they did their nifty work. All mistakes are mine.

**Notes:** Thank you very much for reading and following my story. I really appreciate the extra effort from those of you who sent me a review. Feedback really helps!

**Disclaimer:** The SGA world is not mine. I wrote this story for fun not profit

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**_The Specimen Strikes Back_—Chapter 2**

One moment, John had been firing round after round at the Dart, becoming increasingly frustrated because it had flown nearly out of range. Then, out of nowhere, twin sharp pains had struck him at the back of the head, as if two nails were being rammed into his skull. Teyla had yelled something and pushed him to the ground. Disoriented by the pain, he had crashed down awkwardly. His tac vest did little to cushion the right side of his ribcage from the impact onto a tangle of deadwood and rocks.

Even though he hadn't hit it, the hammering in his head became excruciating and then his world dissolved into nothing.

The next moment, he woke up as something cut into the back of his left triceps. Instinctively aware that he wasn't in friendly territory, he stopped himself from crying out. Though he couldn't help but jerk away from the object that relentlessly burrowed into his arm.

His temporary loss of self-control didn't matter. He hadn't moved at all.

Tight rubbery bands restrained him at the forehead, chest, hips, wrists, elbows, thighs and ankles. He couldn't even turn his head. A contraption that he couldn't see held him face down, at an angle so that his head was lower than his feet.

Below him there was a pale grey floor made of large rectangular plates. The room was brightly lit from above; he could see his own shadow. He appeared to have been strapped into a sort of oblong frame, like a giant version of the fancy metal baskets Mrs. Danview—their family's talented cook—used to grill whole fish for his father's pretentious barbecue parties.

Four elongated shapes flanked his shadow. They moved like arms with extra joints. Robotic, he guessed. That had to be a better explanation than the other idea that popped into his head. Extra-creepy aliens.

No one spoke. The only noises he heard were a low persistent hum, like a spinning fan, and sporadic clicking noises. No sounds of breathing or other movements. An bitter chemical scent, reminiscent of formaldehyde and chlorine bleach, assaulted his nostrils.

All the information that he could gather with his admittedly restricted senses suggested that he was alone in the room.

At first he thought that this place wasn't anything Wraith-related. Then he second guessed himself. He couldn't rule out that it might be something concocted by Michael—he tended to be more creative than the others of his kind. John still felt guilty for his part in the genesis of that über-evil Wraith nemesis. He should have fought harder against the experiment. But why was he even thinking of this? Guilt was such a useless emotion to creep up on him at this time.

Despite the utter discomfort, his first truly coherent thought zoomed in on Teyla. Where and how was she? From his very limited range of sight, not a trace of her—he wanted to believe that her absence was a good thing. Wherever she was had to better than his current predicament. The other possibility was too awful to even think about. She had just gotten back off the injured list since that Sunday when they lost Carson and too many others.

Don't go there, John told himself. And this was also not the time to think about Rodney and Ronon's whereabouts. In this rather dicey situation, he had to focus on the here and now to maintain a solid grip on himself.

The scorching heat that wracked his injured arm, contrasted wildly with the cold that penetrated deep into the rest of his body. He was surprised not to see misty puffs coming out of his mouth as he panted through the agony.

Whatever kind of hell this was, it was freezing.

And, to top it off, he had been liberated of every stitch of clothing. His time well spent at the US Air Force SERE school notwithstanding, it was damned hard to maintain confidence in oneself when that self was naked, restrained and undergoing some type of invasive surgery while wide awake. During those not so fun-filled training sessions, he had not been exposed (pardon the pun) to anything resembling this particular scenario.

His head throbbed, a lingering reminder of the last thing he had felt before waking up in this torture chamber. What the f—k had happened?

He didn't believe that anyone could have possibly managed to get past Teyla to bludgeon or shoot him at the back of his thick skull. Not unless they had gotten to her first.

But no, he remembered that this monster of a headache had come first, before Teyla had tackled him to the ground. She had ended up sprawled on top of him, frankly feeling heavier than she should. She had been yelling something. Maybe a warning of some kind. He could think of no reason for either of them to have been singled out for special attention. Whoever had taken him must have taken her too. She had to be alright. At least, she had to be alive.

The pain made it so hard to think straight.

The pressure in his arm relented for a few seconds as the drill withdrew. His sigh of relief became a yelp, or rather a squelched manly groan, when another instrument dug into his arm. It pulled and tugged, like forceps or a pitchfork. He gritted his teeth as he rode through the searing pain and the accompanying waves of nausea that threatened to make him spew his guts.

The forceps scraped bone. His eyes misted and he could no longer follow the movements of the shadows vivisecting him. He bit his lip to stop his urge to scream.

After what seemed forever, the forceps finally withdrew. Something clanged into a receptacle.

His transmitter, no doubt. So much for Carson's—bless his departed soul—bright idea to implant it deeper to avoid detection by camouflaging it along the bone. Great in theory, but the repercussions, not so much. Note to self: recommend reinstituting the old-fashioned subcutaneous approach. Easy in, easy out.

Blood, his blood to be exact, dripped onto the floor. It wasn't an alarming amount yet, but still …

"Hey, at least put a bandage on it," he said, not the cleverest of conversation starters but it was the most polite thing he could came up with. It wasn't the time to piss off his captors, yet.

No one replied.

Instead, a cold blunt probe pressed along the line of his spine starting at the base of his neck.

He definitely didn't like where it was going. "What are you doing? How about we talk about this?"

Silence, except for the steady clicking sounds he supposed were being made by the mechanisms of the robotic arms. Was he really alone? Someone had to be monitoring whatever was being done to him.

The probe stopped right above his tail bone. The clicks replaced by whirls. No longer blunt, the probe's newly sharp tip began to drill. Slowly.

What he felt now made him completely forget his hurt arm and head.

He fought the restraints. Nothing budged.

"What … do … you want?" he asked, struggling to speak instead of screaming.

No one answered.

Another probe began its trek down his spine. This one stopped half way down his back before it too started to drill. In a tremendous shock wave, pain swept out to fire what had to be every single nerve ending in his body. He couldn't breathe. This was worse than when the Wraith had fed on him.

His stomach flipped. At the first sounds of retching, a flexible hose, like the trunk of an elephant, reached over him and covered his mouth. It sucked up his vomit on the go.

Not a drop fell to the floor.

He coughed and gagged, unable to fill his lungs with enough oxygen. Some sort of tubing must have been strategically placed farther south along his body because, while he was sure that he had wet himself, no liquid other than blood splattered the floor. As if his helpless nudity wasn't humiliating enough.

The removal of his transmitter he could understand in a strategic way, but he couldn't figure out the reason for the other surgical stuff.

"Why are you doing this?" he said in a whisper before he passed out.

After that, time passed excruciatingly slowly and paradoxically quickly as the ministrations of new implements of pain jarred John into consciousness and the agony escalated until he plunged back into blissful oblivion.

When he managed to string a few thoughts together, he couldn't decide what was worse, being woken up by a thin tube snaking through his nostril down his throat, or to the sting of multiple simultaneous injections into his stomach, the side of his neck and—of all things—between his middle and pointer fingers. Though, maybe, he didn't have to choose. So far, his hosts had demonstrated the uncanny ability to outdo themselves in the nasty surprise department.

In another moment of lucidity, John figured out that while there had to be a point to these excruciating procedures, all the reasons he could conjure up were too absurd to be true. Which meant that at least one of them had to be on the mark.

Even more than the physical torment, what was driving him nuts was the unbroken silence that followed each of the questions he flung out in a progressively croakier voice. If his captors were going to dissect him to death, at the very least they should have the courtesy to tell him why.


	3. Chapter 3

**Written for**:The Sheppard_hc 2013 Summer Pic-Fic Challenge

**Acknowledgements**: Thanks to Coolbreeze1 for the cool pic prompt and Amycat8733 and firedew for being my wonderful beta readers. All mistakes are mine.

**Notes:** A special thanks to those of you who sent me a review. Your thoughts and ideas are great.

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**_The Specimen Strikes Back_—Chapter 3**

Teyla clenched her jaw to stop her teeth from chattering. The slight vibrations she felt under her bare feet supported her hunch she had somehow been spirited away into the bowels of a space vessel—a large and, fortunately for her, sparsely inhabited one. Unfortunately, the vessel's climate controls were not set at a temperature fit for humans, especially naked ones.

The only good thing about having no clothes that might rustle or boots that might thud was that she needed minimal effort to move silently. While that was a skill she had mastered since early adolescence, now her movements were alarmingly uncoordinated. She had already tripped twice on nothing but her own toes. Maybe her sluggishness was the effect of drugs still lingering in her system or a combination of the cold, sore muscles and multitude of body aches.

She stooped as she walked through the low rectangular passage. It was no wider than the space occupied by the three parallel rail tracks and the narrow corridor that ran between the tracks. The only light came from the hall she had just left and the one she would soon reach.

Fearful of being caught unaware by an approaching container or worse, she periodically glanced behind her shoulder. No signs of danger, so far.

At the end of the passage, she flattened herself against the wall and surveyed the next chamber. It was completely empty.

Similar to the room where she had woken up, this one had no visible doors, but unlike the other much larger room, the walls and ceiling here were lined by mirrored panels and the space was circular. In the middle of the floor the tracks split off in two directions. The two on her right continued straight and the other took a ninety-degree turn to the left.

Teyla mulled over her choices. She could follow the left track that had carried the container that she had escaped from or the two going straight, the direction she must have come from while unconscious. If she followed the left track, she might be able to stop anyone from discovering the broken container and hunting her down. But the passage straight in front of her held the potential for a much greater reward. It might lead her to somewhere in the vicinity of where she had been divested of her clothing and her weapons. Even better, in that direction she might encounter a container holding John. Until she found clear evidence to indicate otherwise, she would not even consider the possibility that he might have already been killed.

With a great sense of urgency, she opted to forge straight ahead. Her clumsiness gone, she moved lightly on the balls of her feet.

As she crossed the room, the sight of her tiny, distorted reflection multiplied to infinity was not as disconcerting as the sudden thought that someone might be watching her. Maybe her captors knew that she had escaped and they were just letting her think that she was free. Or, perhaps, they had such confidence in the devices and drugs they used to control their captives that they had not foreseen the need to outfit the interior of their vessel with surveillance equipment.

She much preferred the latter possibility.

As she traveled through the next passage, she tried to avoid distracting herself with speculations about the identity of the inhabitants of this vessel. Even though she had time for only a cursory examination of her surroundings, she had a strong feeling that they were not humans, Wraith, Ancients or any of the other sentient beings that she had encountered so far in her travels. Whoever they were, they apparently did not have much interest in nurturing friendly relations with other species.

Part of her dreaded meeting them, the other part wanted to kill them.

The next chamber also showed no signs of life. All four walls were occupied by instruments, some with blinking lights, others with monitors displaying colorful graphics of changing shapes and curves. The equipment reminded her a little of Carson Beckett's or rather now Jennifer Keller's laboratory. The main difference being the grander scale, vaster number and bolder color scheme of the ones here. The eye-jarring bright pinks, purples and blues were definitely beyond the muted palette that pervaded Atlantis.

In contrast to the eerie silence that she had encountered in the other parts of the ship, this room was filled by a cacophony of clicking, beeping and buzzing noises. Along one wall, formations of pinkie-finger slim, multicolored tubes were neatly lined up in racks that moved along a conveyor belt system until they were individually grabbed by multiple flexible appendages and inserted within the panels of a tall, egg-shaped machine. As each panel slid shut, pulses of green and magenta lights radiated upwards to a large flashing screen that fanned out from the tip of the egg.

Teyla wasted no time trying to make sense of the patterns of colors that advanced from right to left on the screen. Something else drew her attention.

A third of the way into the room, the twin tracks that she had been following vanished from sight within a horizontal, thick-walled, cobalt blue cylinder—its shape reminiscent of the MRI scanner that had been brought over from Earth before the scientists had learned the true versatility of the much more compact Ancient scanners.

The machinery at the rear of two transport containers protruded from the end closest to her. She could not see who lay within them. Her heart filled with the hope that she might have found John.

Even though she had no idea how long she might have to wait, she dismissed the inner voice of experience that shouted at her not stay in any one place for too long. This was a risk worth taking.

She hid behind a nearby array of floor-to-ceiling pipes and set herself to wait until the containers exited the giant scanner. She sat and wrapped her arms around her knees in an attempt to conserve heat.

After a while she had to rub and massage her arms to fight off the numbness. Her nose itched and she already had to snuff several incipient sneezes. At least her finger nails had not turned blue as of yet.

Interminable minutes passed until the lights on what she assumed was the scanner's control panel flickered and shut off.

She sense Wraith before the containers moved on the rails and its two unconscious captives became visible to her eyes. Despite the disappointment, she was curious at the revelation that while it functioned, the machine had masked the Wraith presence from her senses. She filed that information away for the future.

The containers with the Wraith proceeded on their journey out of the room in the direction where she had come from. Teyla felt no pity for those two—the fewer Wraith, the better.

To avoid inadvertently activating a machine or alarm, she didn't touch anything as she searched around for something to wear or use as a weapon, preferably both. If this room was the equivalent of a laboratory, there might be protective clothing or laboratory coats like the ones the scientists and medical personnel used in Atlantis. Even a blanket or drape would be nice.

She found nothing useful.

She went through the next passage even more quickly than the previous one. An ominous feeling in her gut was telling her to hurry or she would be too late. For what, she did not know.

Since there was no space between the rail tracks and the walls, she walked between the twin rails of one track. The soles of her feet had gotten used to the chill. Or maybe they had gone numb.

A sudden rush of colder air chilled her naked back. She jumped over to the other set of rails just in time before a container swooshed by. This one moved much faster than the others. She caught a flash of its occupant. It was neither human nor Wraith. She could not be certain, but it looked like one of the large, tree dwelling animals native to the planet her team had been visiting before everything went wrong. Before the four of them had gotten split up, John and Rodney had entertained themselves with obscure jokes about red-bottomed baboons, whatever those were. They had promised to show her and Ronon pictures and then the Wraith had appeared from nowhere.

She felt sorry for the creature, but she had to persevere onward. Her priorities were to find John, then Ronon and Rodney. The rescue of others would have to wait.

While she was definitely thankful that no one awake frequented these areas, the fact that she had yet to encounter a single crew member puzzled her. Did they ever use these passages? How many of the internal functions of this vessel were automated?

This part of the ship had been specifically set up to process captives, for a yet to be determined purpose, until they were disposed of like kitchen refuse. Everything she had seen so far looked like a larger, more automated version of the systems employed by the Hoffan scientists to handle the small animals they experimented on when they were developing their ill-advised drug. Were she and the Wraith supposed to be experimental subjects or food or what?

She again took every precaution to scout out the next chamber before entering it. Unlike the other rooms, this one had a distinguishable doorway. It was shut and it stood in the middle of the wall facing her. Four empty containers were stacked into two racks in the middle of the wide room, obscuring the view of its other half. Evenly spaced in front of each rack, there were two large hip-high oval pedestals. A fifth empty container sat on top of one pedestal; there was nothing on the other one. Each pedestal was flanked by a wheeled cube, similar in size to the utility carts used in the Atlantis infirmary, and a tall cone from whose tip protruded six long appendages.

Teyla did not have a chance to explore the room.

Without making a sound, a bright blue beam of light shot out from an indentation in the ceiling above the unoccupied pedestal. At the same time, she experienced a powerful resurgence of the headache that had persisted as a minor nuisance since she had regained consciousness.

Not knowing what to expect, she huddled behind the other pedestal. She hoped that if someone came they would not notice her immediately, giving her a chance to decide on a course of action.

The blue light spread to cover the entire surface of the pedestal. Then it began to pulse. Even though watching the strobe beam made her feel nauseous, Teyla forced herself to keep her eyes open. Whatever was happening was important.

Three things happened at once: The beam shut off; a familiar cold chill jarred her senses to high alert; and a motionless Wraith appeared sprawled on the pedestal.

What she had just witnessed had to be the result of something akin to Asgard beaming technology. That was how she had been brought into the ship.

In the time it took her to blink at the next sudden flash of blue light, the body disappeared and rematerialized within the container that stood on the pedestal next to her. Startled, she scooted away from it.

Then she saw that all of the Wraith's clothes and gear had been left behind on the other pedestal, spread out in the same arrangement as they had been when worn by their owner.

No longer worried about staying out of sight of possible surveillance sensors, Teyla surged to her feet and bolted to grab the Wraith stunner. Before she had a chance to take anything else, the robotic arms adjoining each pedestal activated in a swirl of motion. Their clicking sounds reverberated in the otherwise quiet space. One set of tentacles inserted several thin tubes into the body of the newest captive; the other scooped up the Wraith's uniform and gear, and placed them into a compartment that had opened at the top of the wheeled cart.

The compartment slid shut, its contents safe from Teyla's reach unless she decided to do something drastic. In truth, she hadn't been sure that she was desperate enough to wear a Wraith's garments.

She slid her fingers along the gently curved line of the Wraith gun. She knew how to use it and if it ran out of charge it was the perfect length and weight for use in hand-to-hand combat. She was pleased with the choice she had made.

The cart rolled towards the exit. From a tiny opening in its front, an appendage telescoped out and touched a spot on the left side of doorway. It opened to reveal an empty rectangular space large enough to fit several people and service carts. It reminded Teyla of the transporters in Atlantis.

Having nothing to lose and everything to gain, she stepped into the transporter. The cart's limber appendage touched the middle of a horizontal row of three buttons set on the transporter wall. In response, the door shut and she felt an upward movement. She adjusted her grip on the gun to get ready for whatever would come next.

A few seconds later the transporter opened its door. No one rushed out to apprehend her.

Instead, the cart rolled out at a leisurely pace into a room more brightly lit than the ones at the lower level. The air also smelled different, less stale but pungently unpleasant—an unrecognizable mix of odors from strong unnatural chemicals. Breathing it made her feel as if her nasal passages were being scoured by a metal bristle-brush. On the positive side, her sinuses immediately dried up despite the lingering chilly temperature.

The cart presented itself to another tentacle-cone machine which emptied it of its cargo and loaded it into a moving row of buckets that fed into a cabinet-sized instrument. Monitors lit up to show columns of scrolling incomprehensible characters. The device chirped and buzzed without revealing anything about its inner workings.

Rodney would surely have been fascinated by it. However, something more mundane drew Teyla's attention to the first row of shelves that stood on the other side of the mysterious laboratory apparatus.

At one end of a neatly arranged line of Wraith footwear, her boots and John's sat in plain view. As she stepped forward, she also noticed a bundle of Atlantis-black clothing on the shelf beneath the boots.

Caught in the excitement of her find, she almost did not hear the clacking sounds approaching from the far end of the room.


	4. Chapter 4

**Written for:** The Sheppard_hc 2013 Summer Pic-Fic Challenge

**Acknowledgements:** Thank you so much for your reviews and PMs. A huge thanks to firedew and amycat8733 for being my beta readers. This version is slightly different than the one they reviewed. All mistakes are mine.

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**_The Specimen Strikes Back_—Chapter 4**

John regained consciousness when he felt himself being rotated like a chicken splayed on a rotisserie. The frame's motion triggered another bout of nausea. He opened his mouth and took a deep slow breath to stop the urge to upchuck whatever was left in his stomach. Not a smart move—he had forgotten about the foul air. Instead of retching, he coughed, a dry hacking that pulled at his sore stomach muscles.

Once he had been repositioned face up, with feet and head on the same level plane, the whole contraption locked into place. The jolt rekindled the pain from all his injuries. There were some, in mighty uncomfortable places, that he couldn't account for based on what he remembered had been done to him. Be grateful for small mercies his grandmother used to say, mostly about all sorts of things that hadn't made any sense to him when he was a little kid.

Once he stopped coughing, he realized that the room was perfectly quiet. The various torture implements were not turned on at the moment and the temperature was not as chilly as it had been. These had to be good things. Maybe Nana had been right.

He opened his eyes. Bright pink lights blinded him. Even though he immediately snapped them shut, a stinging sensation brought down a few tears. Spots of light continued to blaze through his firmly shut eyelids as though they had been burned onto his retinas.

Just as he had done all the other times he had come back to his senses, he pulled at the restraints in the hope that they had been miraculously loosened.

No such luck.

His body was a patchwork of different kinds of pain. Topping off the list of most annoying were the pulsing fire that enveloped his left arm, the headache that continued to pound his skull, the dozens of injection sites that stung like acid, and the intense cramps that shot through his arms and legs at random times.

Maybe he had also suffered brain damage because no matter how hard he wracked his brain, he couldn't come up with a single, even remotely viable escape plan. Practically blind and shackled from head to ankle, he had nothing to work with.

The assurance of the _leave no one behind_ policy provided no comfort because as far as he knew all his teammates were in as bad or worse trouble than him. To top it off, there hadn't been any time to send Intel back to Atlantis about this mother of all FUBARed missions. By now they had definitely missed their last scheduled check-in. Elizabeth might have already sent Lorne on a search and rescue mission, where they would have come up with no clues as to their whereabouts.

He got yanked out of his funk by a series of loud clacks coming from the far side of the room. It sounded like multiple pairs of high heels walking on a hardwood floor. _Buck up. You got company_, he told himself.

The sound temporarily stopped and was replaced by a light tapping, possibly fingers hitting a keyboard. When the advancing clicking steps resumed, the temperature dropped quickly to its previous frigid level.

John shivered from the burst of cold air on his naked skin.

The steps stopped very close to his left side. John got a whiff of a sulfur smell strong enough to overpower the underlying formaldehyde-bleach scent of the air. Even the Wraith didn't smell this bad.

To avoid being blinded by the lights again, he peered through his eyelashes. Above him, the pink lights had been dimmed so that he could see the light fixtures recessed within the rows of small mirrored square panels that completely covered the arched ceiling. The reflections were tiny and distorted. The best that John could figure was that the being looming next to him, outside the reach of his peripheral vision, had a golden head and lime green clothes. Or was it skin or fur?

It spewed out a rapid fire stream of guttural syllables. Maybe he was being ethnocentric, but to John it sounded like a weird remix of Klingon and either Russian or German. Of course that made him decide to call his captor Worf, even though Worf had been a good guy and this one—whether it was male, female or whatever—definitely was up to no good.

No cultural misunderstanding could possibly justify what he had been subjected to.

As soon as Worf stopped talking, a gender-neutral, toneless voice from the other side of the room said, "It is good that you are finally awake. The results of your analysis are aberrant; you must answer my questions."

John skipped protesting the choice of "analysis" as a euphemism for medical torture and went right into pondering about what had just happened. Obviously, Worf & Co. had a universal translator of some sort, no funky (and hard to understand even for his Mensa-level intelligence) stargate-induced common-language effect around here. This implied that he had not been carried through a stargate and that he was not in some sort of secret facility that had somehow escaped first the MALP and then Rodney's meticulous scans of the planet. The simplest explanation had to be that he was on a spaceship, a very alien one.

"Who are you?" he said. The rawness in his throat made him sound as raspy as a twenty-pack-a-day smoker or like the device that promptly translated his question in Worf's language.

A whirling sound startled him. Like one of Pavlov's dogs, his previous sessions had trained him to associate that sound with pain.

He steeled himself to being hurt again.

Instead, a spray of liquid hit his dry, cracked lips. It tasted like water. He licked and swallowed all the moisture within his reach. Not at all dignified, but necessary.

More guttural sounds from Worf before the translator kicked in and said, "I will ask the questions and you will answer." The mechanical voice paused with a theatrical flair before it continued. "What is your planet of origin?"

John picked the first thing that came to mind. "The place where you kidnapped me."

As the translator did its thing, John wondered how accurate it was. Rodney's primary concern would have been to figure out how it worked.

"That is false," Worf said. "Genomic sequencing and single nucleotide polymorphism analyses indicate that you bear a very distant kinship with the other warm-blooded, bipedal sentient specimens we collected from that planet."

That was impressive. The translator definitely had a very rich vocabulary, complete with plausible sounding scientific verbiage. John's mind practically buzzed as it processed the bits of useful information mixed in with the technical mumbo jumbo. "Collected specimens? Who the hell are you?"

"Our identity is of no consequence to you. Suffice it to say, one of our missions is to carry out a comprehensive, intergalactic astrobiological survey of sentient and protosentient species. That is why we have captured you. If you want to regain your freedom, you must truthfully answer my questions. Where is your planet of origin?"

John suppressed the impulse to protest the legitimacy and morality of any sentient species collecting and experimenting on others. Undoubtedly that argument would fall on deaf ears or whatever sensory appendage Worf used for listening. He said, "Athos."

"That is also false. We have collected numerous specimens from that planet, including the one we captured with you. You do not share sufficient haploidentity to support a claim of genetic kinship with the Athosians."

John felt a mixture of relief and fear at this confirmation that Teyla had been snagged too. He had to find a way to make sure she was safe. "My parents were culled by the Wraith when I was a little kid and the Athosians took me in. I don't remember where I came from originally."

Warned by the loud steps, John acted unfazed by the large head covered in golden fur that suddenly loomed over him.

This feigned nonchalance was hard. Worf didn't look like anything he had imagined. The best thing was that there was nothing bug-like or otherwise scary about him. The first analogy that popped into John's head was of a goat or sheep with an incredibly developed, multi-lobed cranium and very tiny ears. Its pelt-covered face sported a short snout flanked by a pair of big, orange oval eyes with rhombus-shaped pupils. It wore a long-sleeve tunic without any visible buttons or zippers.

"Why do you insist in telling falsehoods? That story is a common one in this quadrant, but it is not true in your case." The translator seemed to be working faster now. In perfect timing with the end of the sentence, Worf raised one arm to give John a brief glimpse of the small device it held between its seven long furry fingers.

Before John could close his fist, Worf splayed his fingers open as it placed the device into his palm. As soon as it touched his skin, John felt the familiar hum of Ancient technology. It was the life-sign detector he carried in a pocket of his tac-vest.

"Your activation of this instrument confirms the results of our phylogenetic analyses which indicate that you are a direct descendant of the Alterans who disappeared from this galaxy ten thousand years ago, presumably exterminated by the Wraith. Your existence is proof that they were not vanquished." Worf took the life-sign detector away and waved a small round object in front of his nose.

John recognized his transmitter, now sporting a cracked casing and protruding filaments. It was broken beyond repair.

Worf continued with his lecture. "Moreover, this device that we removed from your arm, as well as your clothing and gear, contain elements not found in this galaxy. Finally, elemental analysis of your body fluids and biopsy samples from your major organs demonstrate traces of molecules and isotopes not endemic to this galaxy. All of these data irrefutably indicate your provenance from another part of the universe. Therefore I posit that a sizable group of Alterans fled from this galaxy and settled somewhere else where they bred sufficiently to produce progeny such as you."

"I don't know anything about Alterans," John said. He wondered how well his feigned innocence would translate. Odds were high that once again his ATA gene had landed him in very deep doo-doo.

"What you know or do not know remains to be determined. This will be one of the greatest scientific discoveries of my generation. You must l tell me where you are from if you want to earn your life and your freedom."

"Okay, you got me. I am going to tell you about my real planet," John said, deciding to switch tactics. "But before I tell you anything, I want to see my companion to make sure she's alright."

Worf made an obnoxious honking sound that went untranslated. John suspected that it was a laugh.

Then Worf grabbed his left arm and squeezed. John bit his lip to clamp down a yell. Somewhere under that fur, there were some mighty sharp claws or fingernails.

It leaned over him, giving him a prime view of the neat double row of teeth and blue tongue inside the lipless mouth as it spoke, spraying him with spittle that stung his skin. It did not release his arm until the translator had finished relaying the message, "You are in no position to make demands."

"Okay, let me explain something to you in simple to translate words." John waited for the translator to finish with that sentence before he continued. "I'm not going to tell you anything until I see her."

They stared at each other until Worf stepped away where John couldn't see him. There was a long pause in their friendly chat while Worf tapped away at something, maybe a computer keyboard, and spoke presumably with someone through a communication device. Given the loud way these people moved around, John felt certain that there wasn't anyone else in the room. He could hear only Worf's side of the conversation and the universal translator stayed quiet. Then, Worf stomped around the room, pulled open a couple of squeaky cabinets or drawers, and rummaged through some noisy objects.

John spent the time coming up with a plausible story to convince it that he needed Teyla's help to provide the requested information. Somehow he also had to talk Worf into freeing him from the restraints. He didn't think that it would be very hard since in his current position it would be impossible for him to show them his home planet's position on any kind of star chart, whether it was on a computer monitor, holograph or whatever other form they used for navigation. Also, the way he was already hurting, it shouldn't be too hard to look harmless. Honestly, he wasn't positive that he could stand up on his own two feet right now, but if it meant a chance for escape, he would find a way.

Once together, he and Teyla would be able to overpower their captors.

Worf resumed his position next to John. It held a multipronged metal instrument in its hand. "It is unfortunate, but I cannot accommodate your request to see your companion. If you value your life and want to avoid suffering additional pain and injury, you will answer my questions without further delay."

John wasn't afraid for himself, he was worried for Teyla. "Look, I have to see her because she has some of the information you want."

"I believe that my colleague has erred in disposing of your companion so quickly. She would have been useful as leverage for your cooperation." Worf snapped a thin serrated blade onto one of the arms of the instrument. "I have other ways to convince you to answer my questions truthfully. I do not mind gathering more data on the mechanism of action and limitations of your species' pain receptors."

While the not so subtle treat washed over him like it was nothing, John felt as if someone had just stabbed him in the gut. "What do you mean dispose? Where is she?"

"Your companion was Athosian, a subtype that we have already extensively studied. She had no value as a survey specimen and her body mass index did not meet the minimal criteria for our other ongoing experiments. Therefore, she was terminated and recycled to fuel our bioorganic processor."

Worf continued talking, but John tuned him out. He kept on replaying in his mind the words that told him in no uncertain terms that Teyla was dead.

The thought of escape left his mind.

All he could think about now was revenge. He hadn't felt such boiling fury since the Genii siege of Atlantis when Kolya had told him that he had killed Elizabeth.

Worf's associate had thrown Teyla away like garbage to be used for compost and Worf acted as if this was just a minor inconvenience to earning its people's equivalent of a Nobel prize. No matter how much it hurt right now, John didn't have the luxury to let himself grieve for her.

He knew what he had to do and he would do it no matter what it cost him. Smug, self-centered jerks like Worf and its crewmates were bound to slip up in their security precautions. At the first opportunity, he would put a permanent end to their playing around with living, thinking beings as if they were bugs in a test tube.

But first, to convince Worf that he would tell it the truth, John had to let it play with him a little longer. The prospect of suffering through more torture didn't faze him at all.

While his heart had splintered from one loss too many, his body felt completely numb.


End file.
